


HxH Tumblr Drabbles

by Lynffles



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Abominable Snowman AU, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Drabble Collection, Gen, M/M, Time Travel Fix-It, Tokyo Ghoul AU, Tumblr Prompt, nen doesn't exist
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-08
Updated: 2017-04-10
Packaged: 2018-09-15 18:03:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9249494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lynffles/pseuds/Lynffles
Summary: Really what it says on the tin: drabbles I've only been uploading on Tumblr so far, of around 1000-3000 words in length, and mostly one-shots or ideas that I'm not sure I'll have enough time or content to flesh out into full standalone works worth posting on their own. Kuroro/Kurapika, somewhat (okay, mostly) pre-relationship, and all AUs. Tags will be updated with each new chapter; I'll do my best to make them as clear and as organized as possible.





	1. Failure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt fill for the fifth theme of kurokuraweek 2016: Kuroro wouldn't fail. Not this time around.

“—chou. Danchou!”

The first thing he heard after the world _shattered_ into the white fuzz and noise of a video screen gone bad with static was the insistent murmur of his second, and Kuroro blinked rapidly, momentarily disoriented. His vision cleared immediately, but the high-pitched whine in his ears remained, and—had someone taken a sledgehammer to the back of his skull while he hadn’t been paying attention? The debilitating pain was making him nauseous, and given that he’d never been so much as sick even with a simple cold ever since learning nen, the sensation was as alarming for him as it was mind-boggling.

Or maybe the reason he felt like throwing up was because he could see fatal wounds on his friends where there weren’t any, and _you should be dead_ and _I saw you die_ kept skittering along his thoughts like a deranged mantra.

“Danchou, are you listening?” Pakunoda’s tone was clipped now, the way it went sharp and slightly accented whenever she got impatient. He looked up and ignored the phantom dribble of blood trickling down the corners of her lips because _it wasn’t real, just as imaginary as Shal’s smashed face and the horrific cut bisecting Coltopi’s throat—_

“I am.” A pause, because no, he wasn’t, and he needed a second to recall just what it was they’d been discussing before _something_ tore his awareness in half—right, they were deciding on the next job to take. “Can I see the list again?”

“Did you fall asleep, Danchou?” Nobunaga ( _your heart should have been crushed, how are you still alive_ ) teased, and Feitan somewhere in the back of the room gave a low but still audible snort and said, “Maybe he didn’t get enough last night because your snoring kept him awake.”

Kuroro ignored the cacophony of the ensuing, inevitable scuffle and the bizarre ache in his chest, and instead focused on the scrap of paper he accepted from Paku. Written on it was a short list of only five items, nothing so remarkable or world-shattering to cause his headache to double in intensity, but—

 _A clan living in seclusion in Rukuso Valley_ was the very first item, and Kuroro had to swallow the bile that crawled up his throat. It was a wonder that none of his sharper-eyed subordinates had realized that something was very wrong with him; he felt cold as he stared unseeingly at the words, the roar of a waking nightmare crashing through his ears—

 _“You knew—this was going to happen_ — _”_

“The first one,” he heard himself saying slowly, almost dreamily, a counterpoint to his senses threatening to shake apart at the seams, “who sent the request again?”

Silence greeted him, and he looked up to find Pakunoda and Shalnark exchanging questioning looks. The rest had varying degrees of confusion on their faces. Nobunaga and Feitan’s impromptu spat had expanded into a four-way wrestling match to include Uvogin and Phinx, and the four now froze in unison as the awkward wake of Kuroro’s question washed over them.

“No idea,” Shalnark finally answered. “These things never come with their requestors. Does it matter?”

_“—knew this was going to happen sooner or later—”_

Kuroro resisted the urge to shake away the maddening familiar-unfamiliar echo of a voice he’d never heard before, and yet— _can you all hear that_ , he wanted to shout, and risk getting called crazy because it was clear that none of his Ryodan were experiencing the same strange symptoms now plaguing him.

“I’m not sure,” he continued in the same distracted, disconnected manner. “Just—” He tapped a fingertip against the single line. Single, as opposed to the more fleshed-out items below with more details. “It’s too vague.” Were he in a lazier mood he would have just gone with it, vague or not, and left it up to Paku and Shal to find out more about location and identity of their targets, and then—

Something inside him shuddered and refused to take the thought further.

“Call it scratching an itch,” he continued, giving Paku and Shal a small smile of—something. It must have conveyed enough of his need for answers because Paku shrugged and stood up.

“I’ll see if I can track down the requestor. I’m assuming that you’d want to talk to them yourself?” she asked with an eyebrow arched at his uncharacteristic interest in that one specific request.

Kuroro nodded, and settled down to wait as she slipped out. It wasn’t as if they were in a hurry, in any case; they were used to being on standby, while the more restless members were free to wander off and find things to occupy themselves with. Shalnark (young, uninjured, _alive_ ) scooted closer to once again badger Coltopi into getting the same model of mobile phone he was using, and Kuroro felt the slight tremor of Franklin ambling over to fit himself into the space Pakunoda had vacated.

“Must be a pretty big itch if you’re going out of your way to find out more about this request,” the larger man rumbled in reference to his earlier comment.

He hummed noncommittally ( _stubbornly, absolutely refused to acknowledge the shadow of extensive bruising wrapped around Franklin’s neck and face_ ) and pulled out his nen book—a clear dismissal against anyone else looking to grill him about his behavior.

_“—you knew—this was going to happen sooner or later, so why…”_

His headache was abating, revving down to a dull, more bearable throb between his eyes, but his hallucination continued to whisper, choked, dying gasps of a voice gone hoarse with rage and grief.

He’d failed—something. Some _one_. A lot of people, it felt like, and now he couldn’t shake off the urge to make sure it never happened again. But how to do it, when he was still struggling to figure out what was wrong with him—

*

“What is _wrong_ with you? I thought the Ryodan accepted any request without asking questions?!”

Well, they did, but—Kuroro couldn’t keep his astonishment from seeping into his expression as the requestor Pakunoda had tracked down after half a day of searching the eastern outskirts went increasingly red in the face the more he tried and failed to argue his case.

“Any request, but within reason,” he repeated. “You want us to go all the way to Rukuso—that’s on the other side of the continent—because, what? You got caught pickpocketing by a kid half your size?”

“Th’ money was mine! I earned it! We don’t do takebacks, so you gotta go kill the little shit—”

“Technically, that money wasn’t yours to begin with,” Shalnark interrupted. “You couldn’t even keep hold of something you stole. The takeback doesn’t apply; you’re just angry because that kid humiliated you.”

Kuroro blinked and regarded Shalnark with no small amount of surprise as the man sputtered and flushed nearly purple. The blond was usually the most affable of their group, not easily riled, and yet here he was getting snippy.

To be fair, he didn’t seem to be the only one reacting negatively to the tone of outraged pretension in the man’s demands. Machi’s sharp eyes were narrowing, and Feitan’s shoulders had dropped into that lazy slouch that meant he was one more whine away from ripping the man’s tongue clean from his throat.

“—my claim’s legit! If you don’t do this I’m gonna let everyone know the Ryodan ain’t good for their word—”

“Enough,” Kuroro cut in, voice gone a degree cooler. “You forget your place. We’ve killed over lesser insults.” And the man—finally—shut up at that, choking seemingly on his own spit and paling into a pasty white as he realized the consequences of attempting to extort the Geneiryodan.

Kuroro let him sweat in silence for another agonizing minute before continuing in a deceptively milder tone, “Like Shalnark said, there’s no merit in us going halfway around the world just to stoke your petty ego. I won’t accept your request.”

“But—”

“Actually, you should be thankful that kid let you off with just a beating instead of leaving you to rot in jail,” he added as an afterthought, with a mental note to himself to tell Kurapika to stop being so stupidly altruistic—

The man left shortly after that, escorted off the premises by Uvogin and a scowling Nobunaga, not that Kuroro noticed much about his exit because he was too busy trying not so show any visible signs of panic at the name that had slipped in unbidden amongst his streams of thought.

*

_—tears searing trails down his rapidly-cooling skin, trembling fingertips cradling his face, and someone was crying over him but he couldn’t see anymore, oblivion pulling him inexorably down into a darkness so absolute, and then—_

_He died._

He died at hands he’d grown to love, that much he was certain of now, because not even his imagination at its wildest was creative (or fucked-up) enough to come up with hallucinations this convoluted and specific.

In another life (or another time? String theory and quantum physics wasn’t his forte, and he didn’t think that had anything to do with what was happening to him, in any case) he’d watched as the only people who’d come close enough to be called family were cut down by a technique nen exorcists only referred to in tones of horror and barely-veiled disgust.

_Sacrificing life and all potential for one last burst of unimaginable, unassailable strength, and then—_

And then, nothing. He died. They died.

And here he was.

*

Kuroro blinked himself out of the stupor he’d fallen into, just in time to see Uvogin and Nobunaga duck back into the room. Uvo ( _we never found where he buried you_ ) was theatrically dusting his hands, a sharp-edged grin providing ridiculous contrast to the massive afro he had yet to decide to get rid of in this timeline.

“That was fun. But weird,” he added with the blitheness of someone who couldn’t exactly follow the events happening around him but was happy enough tagging along. “Danchou, what’s the big deal?”

“Good riddance to trash,” Shalnark muttered lowly, ducking his head and hunching over his phone. The tips of his ears were red; maybe he felt embarrassed over his earlier outburst? Pakunoda eyed the younger blond with fond exasperation before turning to address her leader.

“Uvo’s right, though. You’ve never questioned requests before. If word really gets around that we’re picking jobs…”

“We’ve always picked jobs,” Kuroro pointed out with a shrug. “I just didn’t feel like doing that one, it’s too much effort for a measly five hundred zenny he managed to make up several times over in subsequent heists, anyway.”

Pakunoda didn’t look convinced. “We can take the other four jobs to make up for it, if you’re that worried,” he offered as a compromise, which—wasn’t really. He understood her concerns, that taking on the rest to compensate for the first refused one wasn’t exactly the correct answer, nor was screwing with the timeline, or whatever it was he was now doing, but—

His headache was gone, as were the ghostly afterimages of injuries on his Ryodan’s bodies, as if whatever cosmic force had been hell-bent on punishing him had decided to let up now that he’d chosen _not_ to take that first job. If that wasn’t fixing whatever was wrong with him, he didn’t know what was.

Now, where did the man say he got caught for pickpocketing…?

*

It would take him a mere six months to track Kurapika down, which was a shockingly, alarmingly short amount of time for him, because if it was that easy for him, how much easier would it be for unscrupulous Hunters to find the kid if they ever got wind of his identity as a Kuruta?

Then again, it wasn’t as if the blond had been broadcasting his heritage. Entering and then qualifying for a slot at one of the most prestigious universities in the continent at the tender age of thirteen, though—now _that_ would draw attention of a different sort entirely.

“Who are you?” Brown eyes bright with suspicion glared up at him— _gods, he’s tiny_ —quashing all half-baked ideas of him just coming right out and telling the truth. The itch was back, urging him to take the blond into his arms and never let go; resisting felt like the hardest thing he’d ever done.

The massacre was never going to happen if he had anything to say about it. The Ryodan would stay whole, barring accidents like Hisoka worming his way into the number four spot again ( _but maybe Kuroro could do something about that, too_ ). Kurapika would never know the grief of losing family, nor the all-consuming rage of having to choose between familial obligation and an unwanted love, and—he wouldn’t have to die, forced to burn the rest of his life away for a single act of revenge.

Kuroro wouldn’t fail. Not this time around.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tumblr's tagging system makes it incredibly easy to shitpost comments in tags, as I found out to my horror the other day how much trouble I'm having pulling up my own fic posts without having to wade through hundreds of unrelated reblogs first. So, uh, aside from the fact that I'm a greedy little thing who will never be satisfied with just likes and am always on the prowl for more feedback, I realized that I also needed to archive my stuff somewhere online in case 2016 happened again and, god forbid, I lost all my backup copies due to one unfortunate reason or another.
> 
> PS #1: I usually try to stay within bounds of Togashi's well-established nen rules in canon, but no amount of finagling could have made fucking time travel Togashi-worthy, so I sort of went to town with this one. Please ignore any inconsistencies. :'D
> 
> PS #2: I very nearly went with the chapter title Somnus for this upload someone take me to the trash heap out back.


	2. Transformation x Present

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt fills for the Transformation and Present themes from kurokuraweek 2015 and 2016: Nothing like a zombie apocalypse to force someone to (temporarily) reorder their priorities.

There were reanimated corpses scrabbling at the base of the wall he was perched on.

Kurapika eyed the snarling, screeching horde with no small amount of disbelief, and then went back to glaring at the other person stuck on the same wall as he was.

“Do you honestly believe that I'm just going to take your word at face value and place myself under zetsu with you at my back and _this_ in front of me?”

Kuroro Lucifer shrugged, nearly unbalanced himself, and quickly crouched so that he was squatting on the wall rather than sticking out like a very tempting target.

“You're not listening,” the man chided. “I'm not going to fight you, not in the middle of a city full of zombies, so there's no need to be on your guard against me. Besides, we both have bigger priorities at the moment,” he added, gesturing at the undead clustered below where Kurapika was standing. The things were a safe fifteen feet away just a minute ago, but that gap was slowly, worryingly lessening.

In whatever was passing for sentience within their decomposing brains, they'd figured out that just clawing at the wall wasn't going to help them reach their target, and they'd started piling on top of each other. In another few minutes there would be a mound high enough for one of them to reach the top of the wall.

“They're attracted to aura. Look at me, no leaking aura,” Kuroro pointed at himself, and then pointed down at the base of the wall below his feet, “no zombies baying for my blood.”

Indeed, the one or two corpses milling about by Kuroro's part of the wall were doing so listlessly, heads cocked at unnatural angles, arms hanging limp, and feet shuffling with no particular destination in mind.

It wouldn't hurt to try, certainly. Kuroro Lucifer was a thieving, murderous asshole, but even he wasn't perverse enough to cook up such a stupid trap while they were in the midst of witnessing the world turn into a goddamn zombie apocalypse movie. And if he so much as twitched wrong once Kurapika pulled his nen in, then he'd just have to call on his nen again and take advantage of Kuroro insisting on being in zetsu, apocalypse or no.

Kurapika took a deep breath and, still keeping half his attention on Kuroro, stopped the flow of aura around his body and _pulled in_.

It was like a hose being turned off; the screeching slowly tapered off into gutteral moaning and teeth clicking, and the mound of bodies literally fell apart. The zombies at the fringes of the crowd started wandering away, and the ones closest to the wall stood looking confused, exactly like predators whose prey had suddenly been snatched out of their grasp.

Kurapika didn't want to turn and see the Kuroro's smug reaction at being proven right, so he continued to glower down at the zombies and started thinking of how to decisively kill them with no recourse to nen.

“Weird, isn't it?” Kuroro commented cheerily. “They're attracted to movements and sound in all the zombie movies I've seen, but then again, nen isn't exactly common knowledge. Anyway, we should go shop for weapons!”

Kurapika gaped. Kuroro ignored him.

“I want a baseball bat. We should get you a pair of tonfa, I think they'll suit you—“

Kurapika cut him off before the ridiculous suggestion could finish. “ _What?_ Wait, why are you—what are you even thinking?!”

Kuroro tilted his head and regarded him for a moment. “I don't know if you've noticed, but we're probably the only ones in this city capable of killing these zombies without getting infected. We should do our civic duty and exterminate as many as we can.”

“Civic duty—“ Kurapika sputtered. “You'll just turn around and rob every bank and unmanned jewelry store the moment the job is done, and like hell am I going to agree to work with you—”

“Just a temporary truce,” Kuroro protested with feigned injury and hands raised in a placating gesture. “You can go back to trying to kill me after we've cleared this place.”

Kurapika opened his mouth to snap another refusal, but the loud squealing of tires broke through the general cacophony of a city dissolving into utter anarchy. They both turned just in time to see a ten-wheeler truck, cab literally covered with swarming zombies, careen down the street past them and straight into a storefront. The resulting explosion felt like a slap in the face, and it wasn't only because of the realization that none of the passengers inside that cab could have survived.

He had to tear his eyes away from the burning store, horror and regret at failing to do anything making him forget his vehemence, for the moment.

“You're insane.”

Kuroro's smile was small, but very pleased, like the expression of someone whose plans were beginning to fall into place.

“So is that a yes or a no?”

*

The looting was to be expected in a city fast descending into an apocalypse-induced chaos, and Kurapika found that he couldn't muster that much energy to care about the multiple instances of theft and aggravated assault happening all around them as Kuroro led him through the aisles of the warehouse.

Once, twice, just because he couldn't stand doing nothing about the blatant imbalance of power he was seeing, he stopped to (very quickly, in the time it took normal humans to draw breath) incapacitate groups of thugs seemingly ganging up on single opponents, but after the third such supposed victim stood up on wobbly legs, looked around at his unconscious assailants, pulled out a pistol and shot all four helpless boys without so much as hesitating, well—

Kuroro was waiting for him at the end of the aisle, eyes dark with some unidentifiable emotion—amusement? Or maybe ridicule would be more apt. “Not a word,” Kurapika growled as he caught up to the older man.

He tried to convince himself that the tilt of the head Kuroro offered him then was more deferential than mocking, but it was impossible not to default to the worst assumption. Luckily for the ceasefire they’d agreed on, Kuroro turned on his heel and headed deeper into the hardware section before Kurapika could do anything else in response.

“You’re not going to give me grief about needing to pay for the stuff we’ll be taking, are you?” Kuroro asked over his shoulder after another dozen steps.

Kurapika stopped and looked around at the empty shelves bracketing the aisle. The sign hanging from the ceiling designated this section as AMMUNITIONS in glaring red letters—of course, guns would be the first to go after the food. Boxes on the floor spilled bullets in piles of dull silver and copper, making footing a bit treacherous if one wasn’t careful about where they walked.

He shook his head, feeling weary all of a sudden. “I’m not.”

“Okay.” Footsteps as Kuroro rounded the corner and retraced his path back to where Kurapika stood waiting for him, and then the sudden sensation of cold steel against his skin: Kuroro unceremoniously dumping the promised tonfa into his arms.

He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting—for the tonfa to feel insubstantial, maybe, in comparison to the comforting weight of the chains he could materialize and control as well as his own limbs, but the sticks were actually rather heavy—heavier than the tanto he’d used before, and slightly longer than the standard-issue batons being used by law enforcement.

He hesitantly spun one by its handle and tested the heft of the other by holding his arm straight out in front with the length of the tonfa tucked against his forearm. Kuroro nodded and made an approving sound.

“Like I thought, they suit you.”

“They’re going to get me bitten and turned into a mindless zombie, and the first thing I’m going to do is hunt you down and eat you.”

Kuroro blinked at him. Kurapika rolled his eyes and lowered his arms. “I’m going to have to get close to use these properly, so my supposition that you’ve picked out the heaviest, largest pair just for the heck of it lends credence to my theory that this is all an elaborate plan to screw me over.”

Kuroro violently shook his head. “It’s not, I swear. They’re heavy, crushing weapons in the right hands—you’ll be splitting skulls open with these. And you’re quick enough to avoid getting bitten or infected. And, well, they also have machetes and long knives if you prefer using them, but I think blades break more easily, and there aren’t a lot left for you to choose from, anyway.”

The blond wanted to retort that the reason the knives had been cleaned out was probably because most looters had more common sense than to choose the blunt, close-combat tools over the more instantly lethal projectiles and edged weapons, but—faced with that unwavering confidence, when he couldn’t think of what he might have done to deserve it—

It was unnerving.

He looked down at the glint of metal hanging off Kuroro’s right hand: it was a metal baseball bat, of course, rounded tip resting against the sandstone flooring of the warehouse. “Typical,” he sighed under his breath. Kuroro seemed determined to live out the worst tropes of the zombie apocalypse movie genre now that they were actually experiencing one, despite his reassurances that he was taking the situation seriously, and the most aggravating thing about it was that calling him out on it would serve no purpose, because, _zombies_.

Never in all the movie marathon nights his subordinates had dragged him into joining had Kurapika thought that it could happen outside of fiction, and the impossibility of it was likely the reason his hate had quieted down to a low buzz at the back of his mind. And, speaking of—he had to check with Linssen and his men, get in touch with the Hunter Association and find out how bad the epidemic was, ask what he could do to help quell the spread of the infection—there were now bigger things to worry about than his personal vendetta, and Kurapika found that it didn’t rankle as much as he thought it would.

Kuroro was watching him again, dark gaze seemingly peering into his every thought, and Kurapika fought against the urge the fidget under that scrutiny.

“Let’s start by clearing out this warehouse,” the man suggested after another pause, “then kill everything that shambles within a mile’s radius all around.”

Kurapika opened his mouth to remind Kuroro to leave the unturned humans alone, but stopped to cock his head. The vast overhead spaces of the warehouse meant overall shitty acoustics and sounds echoing far more than he was comfortable with, but there was no mistaking that the general cacophony of looting had changed in tone: angry yelling turning into panicked screams, and the snarling, moaning chorus of advancing undead just audible underneath it all.

“Shall we?” Kuroro asked, free hand held out in a disgustingly inappropriate gesture of invitation.

In response, Kurapika flicked one of his tonfa in his best approximation of a flipped middle finger, and stalked off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I might have this unhealthy obsession with pitting Kuroro and Kurapika against mobs of zombies, because this won't be the last drabble featuring the undead.


	3. Frost x Candles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt fills for the Frost and Candles themes from kurokuraweek 2016: The reward money was exorbitant considering the fact that the request was coming from an unremarkable village in the middle of nowhere, so Kuroro really should have suspected that the difficulty would be proportionate...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It should be kind of obvious once you start reading, but nen doesn't exist in this AU, so Kuroro is about as impotent as a limp rubber chicken especially compared against what Kurapika is in this thing.

“You don’t look like a yeti.”

The dull thunk of a hefty piece of wood getting split into two underscored the bewildered stare now being thrown his way in response to his curiosity, and Kuroro was treated to the singular experience of regretting not thinking before opening his mouth.

“A what?”

Kuroro warily eyed his host, waiting for the slightest indication of offended pride. His joints still ached from residual cold, and he didn’t fancy having to pit his agility against the arm strength that was unfalteringly reducing the tall pile of seasoned timber that previously dominated the clearing into so much firewood.

“A yeti,” he repeated carefully. “A snowman. Bigfoot. Or a mountain man, whatever it is your kind are called.”

The blond tilted his head, still looking more puzzled than angry at the unflattering terms—or maybe this was his first time hearing them?

“What do humans think we look like?”

“More fur, maybe?” Kuroro answered, finally deciding that it was safer to be candid and stupid than be seen as secretive and untrustworthy. “And, well—you have… unexpectedly dainty feet.”

A frown, an exasperated huff. “Humans,” the creature muttered, looking down at his booted feet, never mind that he looked and dressed exactly like one, with the exception of the—

Eyes, remarkably, strikingly red, blinked at him and up at sky, and the pointed ears of a canine swiveled, twitched, listening to the unseen currents of frost and ice-driven wind and sleet. The white-blanketed forest around them stilled, held its breath, then sighed, and Kuroro watched with wide eyes as the bubble of calm bracketing the clearing shivered and wavered. The furious rage of a full-blown snowstorm reached his ears and then was immediately muffled—as if a door had opened and then shut.

The barrier held. Kuroro tried very hard not to think about the fact that the very being he’d come to hunt was the only thing now protecting him from freezing to death within seconds.

“I had enough firewood stockpiled, but then _someone_ —” a red-eyed glare, reassuringly half-hearted, “decided to hike up a mountain in the dead of winter and nearly die on my doorstep.”

“Thank you for saving me?” Kuroro offered, all the helpless innocence and harmless charm he could muster packed into a grateful smile—which was sincere, dammit, why did people always react with suspicion whenever he broke out that particular expression?

“Anyway, as you can see, I don’t have fur. At least, not in this form,” the blond added after a brief pause, making Kuroro think _shapeshifter_ , and wonder, and want—a dangerous combination considering his circumstances. ( _Those ears—could he turn into a fox? A wolf?_ ) He barely managed to keep his thoughts from showing on his face, and continued watching with attentive interest instead, as the yeti knelt to tie bundles of firewood together with rough twine.

“Also, I like staying warm just as much as the next human. Just because I’m more impervious to cold doesn’t mean I don’t feel it.”

Hence the clothes and the firewood, probably, but Kuroro didn’t understand the logic in attempting to look and act normal, not when rumors of _guardian_ and _spirit_ shrouded the mountain in mystery and proof of otherworldly power swirled around them as a spherical shield against the most hostile weather he’d ever been in.

“And last, but not the least—because those names are atrocious and unimaginative—we’re called—”

Kuroro blinked and shook his head, thinking, for a second, that maybe the air pressure had suddenly dropped, because the syllables of that last word—they didn’t make any sense. The consonants curled like the oppressive hum before the boom of thunder, the vowels sang like the tinkle of shivering ice in the brilliance of daylight after a blizzard.

“Sorry, I didn’t catch that—”

There it was again, and Kuroro jerked his head, this time in genuine distress and confusion. The blond laughed, apologetic and resigned. “Your ears can’t parse it. Kuruta—that’s the closest approximation in your tongue that I can think of. We’re called Kuruta.”

“Kuruta,” he repeated slowly. “Your name—Kurapika. Is that also an approximation?”

“More or less.”

Something that felt like disappointment unfurled, deep and buried, like realizing that he missed something he’d never even experienced. Kuroro kept it choked down and continued with his questioning.

“What was that? Why—is that your language?”

Kurapika hummed, nimble fingers expertly tying the last knots in the twine despite the thick work gloves covering his hands. “Yes. I’ve read that human ears can only hear and process sounds within a certain frequency, so maybe that’s why.”

“I want to learn it.”

The yeti—Kuruta—looked up at him, and straightened from his crouch, the smaller of two bundles of firewood cradled in his arms like a pile of laundry. “Learn it? I don’t think your vocal cords are made for it.”

The back of his neck started to grow warm with delayed embarrassment. “Well, understand it, at least.” Or learn how to withstand it instead of wanting to give in to instinct and curl up into a ball against the inhumanness of it.

And then, in a moment of reckless daring, or maybe because Kurapika was looking at him with tolerant amusement, he added, “I’m stuck here until spring, aren’t I? I have time to learn.”

“I suppose you do. Here,” the blond said, stepping close and tipping the firewood into Kuroro’s arms, “you should have recovered enough to start making yourself useful, if you’re going to be bothering me for the rest of winter.”

Kuroro had enough time to indulge in his bemusement—the scent of frost and ozone that lingered in the air wherever the Kuruta had been and the inexplicable warmth he could feel emanating from the pile of wood he was holding made for an odd combination—while Kurapika replaced the tarp covering the rest of the tinder they wouldn’t be able to carry back.

His objective… hadn’t changed. Not yet. But there was no harm in keeping his options open.

*

Kuroro had been worried that getting stuck in a mountain cabin for the entirety of winter would see him turning into a drooling nitwit by the end of those three months, because—he had a mercurial attention span and he got bored _so very easily_ , he’d estimated that it would take him three weeks tops to finish reading every single tome in Kurapika’s not-insignificant pile of books, he’d grown up in a city and knew absolutely nothing about living so far from civilization for extended periods of time, and there was a very valid reason why hibernation was the natural recourse of all warm-blooded animals being subjected to sub-zero temperatures every three months out of the year.

Fortunately for Kuroro’s sanity, his sole companion through the dark of winter was just this side of supernatural, and the experience of being under the mercy of something utterly alien to human sense and logic was new enough that he felt more exhilaration when he should have been terrified. He spent days peppering Kurapika with questions once he realized that the Kuruta was as generous with his time and knowledge as he was with his home, and hours could slip by with him doing nothing but watching (discreetly), quietly admiring and marveling at the way the pointed ears would twitch in response to changes in the howl and whistle of the wind outside (or was it actually the opposite, that the weather would get better or worse, like notes plucked from a taut string with each flicker of Kurapika’s blood-red eyes?)

And it wasn’t as if they were snowed in completely; the Kuruta ventured out at least once a week and allowed Kuroro to accompany him—to retrieve more firewood, to hunt (always unforgettable experiences), maybe for reasons as simple as stretching their legs, or as unfathomable as surveying the domain he guarded—always wrapped within protective bubble of his winter barrier, and the chance to see more of that ability was invaluable in and of itself even without getting to look around the mountain from behind the safety of that barrier.

The point was, Kuroro couldn’t get bored (never, when he was living with a creature so intriguing, and learning a tongue no human before him had ever deciphered), at least not traditionally, but there were nights when complete darkness would fall, and the various noises of the never-ending blizzard outside would seemingly blend into a low, unceasing moaning wail, and he’d find himself sinking into a stupor, unblinking stare glued to the fireplace, or the oil lamp, or one of the candles Kurapika sometimes lit and scattered around the cabin.

“Do all humans like staring into candlelight, or is it just you?”

It took effort to tear himself free of the hypnotizing candle flame, and a few more seconds of struggle to understand the question that had been asked.

“All of us, I think. It’s mesmerizing.” And then, awareness finally catching up to his mouth, Kuroro added, in an effort to sound more informative, “Humans tend to dislike the dark. It makes us feel blind and helpless.”

He regained enough of himself in time to refrain from saying that humans also disliked the unknown and the unfamiliar, lest the blond realize that the adjective would apply to his kind from a human’s point of view. “I’m generally fine with darkness as long as I have a light, though. I’m just—” he stopped, and stifled the yawn that threatened to break as if summoned by the mere thought, “—sleepy. And cold.”

“Why not go to bed, then?” Kurapika asked. He was standing behind the ratty old armchair Kuroro had commandeered, and Kuroro could just about make out the eerie red glow of the blond’s eyes if he tilted his head back a bit.

He smiled, maybe a bit pleadingly (feeling, ridiculously, like a kid who didn’t want to get ushered off to bed yet). “In a bit. I want to enjoy the candle light a while longer. You lit these for me, didn’t you?” He gestured at the candle he’d been staring at. “It’s not as if you need the additional light to see, when you already have the fireplace going.”

He tried not to sound too presumptuous, but he knew for a fact that the Kuruta could see perfectly fine in the dark, and kept the fireplace lit only for its heat. The candles were a luxury, provided solely for the benefit of the poor human who didn’t have good night vision—and he wanted to make his gratitude known.

Kurapika hummed wordlessly and moved away, making Kuroro think that their conversation was done, but the blond returned in short order with his thick quilt blanket wrapped around his shoulders like a cape.

“Uhh.”

“It’s easier to stay awake if you have company,” the blond pointed out mildly as he wriggled into the armchair beside Kuroro—and he couldn’t find it in himself to object, not after Kurapika gave a deep, self-satisfied sigh and burrowed more snugly against his side.

… Okay, so the Kuruta was _really_ pretty even by normal human standards (fine blond hair, unusual red eyes, hypercompetent and alluring and most important of all, _interesting_ ), and he’d wondered— _considered_ what it would be like, but never even thought that it could actually happen without overt advances from his side, and Kuroro could feel himself freezing up with indecision and a most unusual fear. Would yeti even understand the very human concepts of physical intimacy?

Probably not. If he was lucky, Kurapika would only find the idea incomprehensible, or disgusting, and think him stupid or juvenile (Kuroro had asked about his age, and Kurapika had answered with the vague statement that he was at least a few decades older than Kuroro’s twenty-six)—and he realized that it was a very likely outcome the more he thought about it.

Of course, he could just _ask_ , like he’d asked and easily gotten answers about a lot of other things.

“You—”

“Hm?”

Kuroro cursed inwardly. He couldn’t just pop the “do yetis have sex” question without ample preparation (or doing enough of a lead-up so it wouldn’t cause the awkward reaction he was already imagining).

“—did you make these candles?”

 He was already mentally kicking himself even before Kurapika favored him with the expression he’d come to identify as the _you are a stupid human_ look after nearly a month of being repeatedly subjected to it.

“I know how to make candles. But I bought these from the town a few miles west of the mountain. It’s more practical to just buy than make them from scratch,” the blond eventually answered with a dismissive shrug.

“You—go shopping? In human settlements?” Kuroro asked slowly, momentarily thrown enough that he was able to push his original question aside.

“I go on supply runs twice a year. Late spring, usually, and just before winter. Again, I don’t live like a barbarian,” Kurapika added, the smallest combative frown wrinkling the skin between his eyebrows.

“I didn’t mean that,” Kuroro hurriedly assured—he’d seen the bags of grain and cans of food, and the books and the radio and clothes that were very obviously manufactured by human hands, but he was having trouble wrapping his mind around the idea of the Kuruta just strolling into town with none of the townsfolk finding out about the mountain guardian in their midst.

“Just—what do you do with your—” He gestured at Kurapika’s ears, which were arguably one of the features he really, really liked about the blond, second only to his eyes, but were dead giveaways as to the Kuruta’s true nature.

Kurapika pursed his lips, oddly hesitant now when he’d always tolerated Kuroro’s curiosity with ready humor. “… I can appear in human form, if I have to. But I don’t like to,” he added more loudly, as if to ward off any chance of Kuroro asking to see. “It’s uncomfortable and everything feels tight, like my body is too big for my skin.”

It made sense. If the Kuruta were capable of shapeshifting, and their natural state was something more—inhuman, then forcing themselves into disguises just to pass human muster couldn’t be pleasant.

“Okay,” Kuroro said simply, even though he now had more questions than ever—why did Kurapika insist on living and dressing like a human, then, if this form felt restrictive to him? Or did his eyes and ears serve as some kind of outlet for that too-tight sensation? Did it mean that he had more access to his powers the farther he got from his human form? Were all Kuruta like this or was Kurapika the only guardian who lived in a man-made cottage, read human books by firelight, stockpiled candles and sewed his own quilted blankets, rescued strangers without asking for anything in return?

He wanted to _know_ , but the look of relief that stole over Kurapika’s features just then when he noticed that no more new questions were coming was as gratifying as it was warming, and Kuroro found that he didn’t really mind shuttling his thirst for information to the backseat for the moment, since it meant getting to keep the more comfortable silence that had fallen after Kurapika relaxed.

So he settled into the armchair, let his gaze wander back to the gently flickering tongue of candle flame on the side table, tried not to shudder too violently when he breathed out, but—

“You’re still cold?” Kurapika asked with a concerned frown.

“Just a bit.” He already felt better with the warmth of another body plastered along his side (and Kurapika ran a lot hotter than normal humans, which was a puzzle considering his affinity with winter), but this was an inner chill, more imagined than a reaction to external stimuli, probably a side effect of nearly dying of hypothermia not even a month ago. It should go away soon enough.

Kurapika got to his feet, arms unwinding the blanket draped over his shoulders. “Sit up for a bit,” he ordered, and Kuroro obeyed after a moment of confusion—maybe the blond was going to give him his blanket?

He opened his mouth to say that he didn’t really need it—since he was already wearing three shirts and had a blanket of his own—only to stop, gaping, at the tail that pushed its way out of Kurapika’s lower back.

There was a touch of smugness in the half-smile the Kuruta gave him in response to his surprise ( _no, wanting to kiss it away was most definitely not an appropriate reaction at this point in time_ ), and then the blond was settling back down into the armchair, tail gracefully curling into the gap between Kuroro’s neck and the back of the chair and then over his shoulder and down across his chest.

“Grab the other end of this, will you?” Kurapika asked, handing him one corner of the blanket and repositioning it so that it was now draped over the both of them, tucked up under their chins. “And you can put your hands over—just like a pillow on your lap—great, that should help with the cold.”

And Kuroro realized, to his astonishment, that it did. Kurapika’s tail was massive, as long as he was tall, and looked to be as thick around as a man’s waist, but he found, as he tentatively sank his fingers into the fur, that it was mostly—fluff, around the core skin and bone of the spine. Normally he’d be beside himself trying to figure out how the shapeshifting thing worked that the Kuruta could just grow an extra appendage as easily as breathing, but he was too busy soaking up the warmth that radiated from the tail like a heat pack and chased away the last of the phantom chill in his gut.

Wolf, he decided once he’d recovered enough of his wits for his brain to start whirring again. A very large wolf, if the length of the tail was anything to go by. Kurapika would probably outweigh him by several times in his full shift form. The fur was a pale brown, nearly golden color, and this close, Kuroro could smell the slightest hints of musk, and more of that razor-sharp tin scent, scorched earth after a lightning strike.

As distracted he was by his musing, he didn’t realize that he’d started to rake his fingers through the fur until he felt the vibrations of Kurapika growling too low to be heard easily.

He snatched his hands away as if burned. “I’m sorry—I should have—I wasn’t—”

“It’s fine,” Kurapika interjected over his stammering. The tip of his tail twitched once, twice, reminding Kuroro of the way cats at rest would lazily flick their tails. The blond cleared his throat and sank deeper into the cover of the quilt blanket until only his eyes and slightly disheveled hair and ears were visible, and what he mumbled next was muffled by the heavy cloth. “You don’t have to stop. It feels nice.”

Kuroro couldn’t remember exactly when his thoughts started to move away from the job he’d set out to do and the hefty reward money that had been promised to any hunter who could take down the mountain guardian and the winter that perpetually enveloped its top regions, but if he’d cared to keep track, this point in time would probably be it, the moment his other options faded into the darkness, leaving his one objective to shift and change and reorder itself around this bright, wavering flame.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really need to work on my ending lines, I suck at them.
> 
> Please check out [this adorable fanart](https://www.pixenli.com/images/1491/1491494441001941700.jpg) Rplmko ([tumblr](http://rplmko.tumblr.com/) | [DeviantArt](http://rplmko.deviantart.com/)) drew of Kuroro and yeti!Kurapika cuddling under Kurapika's quilted blanket! ❤❤❤


	4. Panic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt fill for the third theme of kurokuraweek 2016: All right, so maybe he had a death wish. Like, the tiniest death wish, really nothing to get alarmed over. All researchers who had ghouls as their focus of study had death wishes, anyway, it wasn't as if he was alone in that aspect.

Getting caught by a ghoul, they said, was the closest a person could get to feeling the primordial dread of getting chased down like prey, which was totally _not_ why Kurapika went out looking for a nest of the things, but, well, _okay_ , maybe part of him wanted to see for himself if that was really the case, because as far as he was concerned, ghouls were just another species of human.

… If one ignored the scientifically proven fact that they could only subsist on human flesh and had murder organs growing out the small of their backs, anyway.

Still, he might as well kiss his doctorate degree goodbye if he tried to formulate his hypothesis based on conspiracy theory articles on the Internet and old wives’ tales, so here he was. Trussed up in what he could swear had to be the largest manifestation of kagune on record, about to be eaten by the most gigantic ghoul anyone had ever encountered.

He should have brought a camera instead of a knife. Which, he’d need to start reaching for soon, since he’d strapped it to the inside of his right boot instead of somewhere sensible like alongside his arm, and there was a mouth yawning open above him, seconds away from chomping down on his neck—

“Ubogin, put the kid down.”

“But danchou—!”

The kagune holding him aloft immediately unfurled open despite the childish whine, and Kurapika dropped to his feet in a low crouch. He couldn’t have run away just then despite being unrestrained, though; whatever escape paths not ringed by waiting ghouls were blocked by the upturned and wrecked piles of the café’s furniture and the bloody, broken bodies of CCG agents.

Kurapika tried not to look at the dead CCG agents. If he did, he might just lose his hold over the unnatural calm that had fallen like a protective shroud back when the CCG attacked and blood and limbs started flying.

“You’re not a dove, are you?”

He shook his head and stood up, straightening, to face the man who’d given the order to drop him. Probably the leader, if Kurapika understood the moniker correctly—he hadn’t even manifested his kagune, and kept to one side and out of gore splattering range while his subordinates mowed through a dozen CCG agents in the time it took for Kurapika to come to the realization that he’d screwed himself with his own half-baked ideas.

“What are you, then, if you’re not a CCG dog?”

“… I’m a student,” he answered, the simplest, easiest reply he could give under the circumstances—because, yeah, it looked kind of bad, being the only civilian to stumble into what he now suspected had been an ill-advised raid against a nest of class-S ghouls.

The leader gave him a skeptical look.

“… Hey, if I wanted to lie to avoid getting eaten, I would have given you a more believable occupation,” he added defensively.

Even the other ghouls were looking at him in disbelief now, but he couldn’t help it; for some inexplicable reason, he was still alive, and with every second that passed without a kagune spearing him through the chest, the tinny, hysterical voice at the back of his head yelled louder, and louder, until his thoughts grew stupid and manic with the thrill of staring death in the eye and getting away with it.

“You’re not even scared,” the leader marveled, red eyes ringed by black sclera now regarding him with bemusement. “Or are you actually already going into shock? Whatever the case,” he continued before Kurapika could say anything else, “you can see why we’re finding it hard to believe that you’re just a student. The nearest university is halfway across town, and there are dozens of better cafés between there and here. Now, what are you doing here, and why aren’t you freaking out more?”

The blond fidgeted and looked around, trying to assess, for the first time since the one-sided battle ended, just how much shit he was in. It didn’t take him long to realize that he wouldn’t be able to tell; there were twelve more ghouls other than the leader, all watching him with expressions ranging from bored to downright predatory. Any one of them could suddenly decide to stop humoring him. It would be over before he knew it.

And then, as it tended to do whenever he found himself mired hip-deep in trouble of his own making, Kurapika’s adrenaline-addled brain took that conclusion and _ran_ with it.

“I heard a rumor that this particular café was being run by ghouls.”

One of the men behind him growled. “—knew it. He’s gotta be a spy, maybe a CCG recruit if he’s not an actual agent yet—”

“I’m writing a thesis!” Kurapika blurted out, cutting off the displeased muttering before it could gain any steam, and that’s it, Pairo was going to kill him if he got out of this alive—

The leader blinked at him. “A… thesis?”

“My doctorate thesis. On ghouls,” he explained stupidly, feeling like his brain and his mouth were running on very different but both very reckless speeds and having no idea how to rectify it except to let himself get dragged along. “And how ghouls and humans might be able to co-exist without conflict.”

“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

It was a different ghoul this time, standing to the side, and Kurapika turned his head to answer him directly. “It’s n-not!” He’d nearly stuttered to a stop—the larger man was half-heartedly trying to wipe at his blood-drenched face with an equally bloody hand, and the muffled yelling at the back of his mind was starting to sound remarkably like Leorio on one of his drunken rants.

He should stop looking around and just focus on the leader—the man at least didn’t look too much like he’d stepped straight out of a slasher film.

“All the academic papers ever written on ghouls are about how to kill you, or how to make use of ghoul physiology without regard for the ghouls themselves, and I just—felt that it was too unbalanced. I want there to be at least one paper with conclusions that benefit the both of our races.”

“That’s… really ambitious.”

“And fucking impossible. Danchou, let’s just kill him, we’re wasting our time—”

“No.” The mild refusal, for all that it was delivered without any heat, sent a ripple of movement through the waiting ghouls—a twitch here, shifting of gravity there, a frown, eyes being narrowed. Kurapika held his breath. “This is interesting. He lives. And we’ll give you data for your thesis.”

“You will?” He felt his eyes widening involuntarily; seriously, he’d come here planning on just observing and see if he could maybe catch any of the staff being careless and letting something slip, and then leave just as quietly without drawing any attention to himself, but to think that he could get an actual interview—

“On one condition, though.” The man known only as “danchou” up to this point blinked, and, after making sure that he had Kurapika’s full attention, allowed the black in his eyes to bleed back to normal human white—which wasn’t that much better because now the blond could see the merry glint far more clearly—“You have to live with us.”

Kurapika felt his knees go weak. “Oh. For how long?”

“For however long it takes you to complete your paper.” The leader grinned, sharply and expectantly. “Or until I get bored of you, whichever comes first.”

Pairo was going to kill him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This becomes a really fun AU to work with despite the convoluted source material once you realize that either side would work well as ghouls. (i.e. I had the briefest moment wherein I considered making Kurapika and company the ghouls instead of the Ryodan.)


	5. Prank x Denial

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It doesn't take long for Kuroro to start hoping that the black dildo on his bed is not just someone's idea of a juvenile prank.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating updated as of this chapter due to graphic descriptions of a sex toy and Kuroro's dirty imagination.

There was a dildo on top of his pillow.

He had no idea how he missed it when he first entered the room, but then again, it was a _black_ dildo, and he’d put on his favorite midnight blue bedsheets over the weekend. It—blended into the background, somewhat, at least until he decided to focus on it, and then he’d frozen in the act of setting his laptop bag down on his desk as his thoughts whirred with _who_ and _why_ and _what the fuck_.

Of course, this being a dormitory, the idea that someone he’d pissed off or humiliated in class might have broken into his room to drop off what was very clearly a juvenile taunt wasn’t _that_ farfetched. He was slightly surprised that it hadn’t happened before now, actually, considering the number of drunken parties and depraved orgies that tended to crop up within the residential halls after hours, in spite of the best efforts of their resident assistants, but, still.

Someone had broken into his room, only to leave a sex toy on his bed. None of his belongings were missing, his books were all where he’d left them, the door had been—picked, most likely, since there was no visible damage that he’d noticed, so the dildo on his pillow _was_ the purpose of the break-in. He just couldn’t tell if it was a simple prank, or an insult, or the most roundabout proposition he’d ever received—there was no packaging, no message, not a single identifying mark to help him track the culprit down.

And that was another thing: he had twelve suspects. Or rather, twelve people with possible motives and enough familiarity with him to dare pull something that could only turn very awkward very quickly if it had come from a complete stranger instead. And depending on which among the twelve it turned out to be, he was going to have pretend it never happened, or laugh it off and plot a fitting revenge for a later date, or run screaming for the hills.

Kuroro really hoped that it wouldn’t come down to the last one.

Actually, he didn’t want it to be anyone from the first group of suspects, either—the ones he was sure felt mostly affection for him, because, if there was more to it—if this turned out to be some kind of weird—confession, he would have to find a way to… refuse. Gently.

… No, it couldn’t be anyone from that first group. Coltopi and Shizuku wouldn’t prank him, he was almost one hundred percent certain; Coltopi was a sweet kid (and too short to effectively pick the locks on their dorms) and Shizuku was nearly asexual with her single-minded fixation on books. Franklin… wouldn’t take part in something so asinine. Nobunaga was too much of a prude—he’d probably spontaneously combust if he got within sighting distance of a sex toy. And Pakunoda had already come out to him—and even if she did find him physically attractive, she’d say it outright.

The same with Machi, who hated crude displays of interest and was notorious for terrorizing any man caught staring too long at Paku and Shizuku. And that left Bonorenolf… who was obsessed with developing a dance-based martial art for his graduate thesis and hadn’t been seen since he disappeared into the performing arts building three weeks ago.

And then there was Hisoka, who would have been his primary suspect, but he’d come to the conclusion that this was actually too subtle for the pervert. Hisoka would have _stayed_ in the room, and he’d have thought the gift of the dildo incomplete without his presence in all its deviant glory.

So, it couldn’t be Hisoka.

Hopefully it’s not Hisoka, Kuroro thought as he gingerly wrapped his fingers around the sizeable… girth… of the toy… and… he frowned in bewilderment. It was actually a good quality dildo—not that he’d held many to really say, but—the soft silicone was far from the tacky plastic he’d been expecting, and it had the tantalizing give of an erect cock. The void-black color was alarming at first glance, but nothing he couldn’t get used to, and he _could_. Get used to it.

(It was _veined_.)

Maybe.

(And it was larger than average.)

Definitely.

Kuroro shuddered, fascinated horror and curiosity and warmth flaring low in his gut—because now that he’d all but dismissed any possibility of this being just an elaborate prank, it was all too easy to imagine slicking it up with the lube he kept in his bedside drawer, stretching himself open with his own fingers, slowly working the flared head in, _or better yet_ —pushing it past pale, toned thighs, watching golden blond hair fan out over his sheets, drinking in the cries as he fed the toy in, inch by agonizingly sweet inch, and— _fuck_.

He was getting hard.

It couldn’t be the guys, no way they’d spend extra money to get him an actual serviceable dildo just to troll him when there were less convoluted ways to go about it. Shalnark was definitely too stingy, Uvogin wouldn’t start shit on his own, and if Phinx and Feitan wanted to screw with him for whatever reason, they’d do it where they could see and get a laugh out of, not break in and drop off something designed to slowly drive him mad with sexual frustration in the privacy of his dorm room.

*

“Hey, Franklin, just curious, but would you happen to know of any good sex shops nearby…”

*

“For the love of—Nobu, _stop yelling_ , there’s nothing shameful about shopping in an adult toy store—”

*

“You recognize the—Feitan got it for you in gold? Wait, _what_ , you and Fei—”

*

“Look, Shal—I know these websites get thousands of orders every day and it’d be impossible to track down a single purchase without a receipt, but couldn’t you, I dunno, triangulate based on merchandise specifications…? No?”

*

“ _—I’m gonna cut your dick off if you touch my ass one more time, you Pogo reject—_ ”

*

“So, just confirming, you’re still into girls, right?”

*

“—wait, Machi, no, I _swear_ I’m not trying to hit on you or Shizuku—”

\-----

“I heard something funny in the common room today.” Pairo flopped down at the bottom of his bed, leaned back on his arms, and waited for his cousin to acknowledge him—and Kurapika made a wordless, querying noise, but didn’t move from where he was squinting at his laptop screen. He was obviously busy with an assignment, but could be distracted depending on the extent of his personal investment in the rumor…

Pairo grinned.

“Kuroro Lucifer.”

His cousin’s reaction was immediate and obvious: Kurapika stilled, fingers stuttering to a stop on top of various keys, and Pairo was almost irresistibly reminded of a dog sitting up at attention in response to a whistle. “He has a secret admirer, apparently,” he continued. “He’s been trying to find out who it could be.”

Kurapika scoffed, and the stiff set of his shoulders relaxed somewhat. “He has girls trying to ask him out at least once every week. That’s nothing new.”

“He’s never shown interest before, though,” Pairo mused, unable to resist putting on a bit of theatrical puzzlement. “If I’m hearing things correctly, this person broke into his room and left a dildo on his bed. It’s brazen. And different enough from all the other confessions that he can’t resist wanting to figure out who did it.”

“… A confession? That’s how he’s seeing it?”

Kurapika’s voice sounded strange and tight, like rope forced into taut stillness by hands pulling in opposite directions. “It’s what I heard.” Pairo kept his own voice nonchalant, even as he began dropping his pretenses and openly stared at Kurapika so as not to miss a single tic—and the blond still had his back turned to the room, which, really, did nothing to assuage Pairo’s suspicions.

“It’s been days and none of his friends have owned up to it,” he added. “They couldn’t have held out that long, so it’s not a prank from any one of them.”

He got a noncommittal hum in reply, and the careful clicking of keys as Kurapika slowly resumed typing his stalled sentence from earlier. Pairo narrowed his eyes.

“Hey, aren’t you and Killua the only ones outside of Kuroro’s group who know how to pick these dorm locks?”

“Leorio, too,” Kurapika corrected, finally turning his head to look at Pairo over his shoulder. “I taught him in an afternoon—it’s not a difficult skill to learn.”

Pairo raised an eyebrow at that honestly pathetic attempt at deflection. Just for that, he was going to stop acting like he wasn’t here to confirm that Kurapika was the one who’d dropped off that dildo. “You signed off on an unmarked package last week. It looked exactly like one of those discreet deliveries you get from an online sex toy store.”

It would have been easy to deny, seriously; it wasn’t as if Pairo had started hurling accusations already, but, for all that Kurapika could poker face like the best of their most disillusioned, world-weary seniors, he never could make himself lie to his family. The blond folded like wet tissue paper, and Pairo watched with fond exasperation as Kurapika jerked his gaze back to his laptop, the blush rising up the back of his neck the most damning evidence of guilt he could have presented.

“Kurapika.”

A garbled mumble; Pairo couldn’t hear very clearly, but there was maybe a belligerent “piss off” in there somewhere. “Does it matter?” Kurapika rallied after another moment, throwing his head up and mulishly kicking at the floor, pushing his swivel chair into a gentle rotation. “He’s not going to find out, anyway.”

“That’s not how confessions work,” Pairo chided.

“It’s not a confession!”

“What’s it supposed to be, then?”

“It’s a—you know—” Kurapika grasped at the air, hands making vague waving motions as if trying to form the shape of an abstract sculpture, “ _Fuck you_ for challenging my rationale in class last week Tuesday just because you didn’t agree with the predicate I used.”

“Uh huh.” Pairo’s drawl was now infinitely more amused than exasperated. He was trying not to be a dick about it, really, but his cousin was setting himself up to be a terribly easy mark for relentless teasing, and it would be remiss of him not to seize advantage. “So you’re not acting out on your repressed crush, then?”

Kurapika’s denial was gunfire-quick, voice rising into a near-yelp. “I do _not_ have a crush on that asshole!”

“So you say,” Pairo soothed, as he held his empty palms up in a placating gesture. “It _still_ looks like you have one, I mean, buying your academic rival a dildo because you lost an argument to him in class? A bit juvenile, if you ask me.”

“Pairo!” Kurapika gasped, the downturned twist of his lips dismayed and betrayed in equal measure. “You’re supposed to be on my side!”

“I am, I am!” He couldn’t help the laugh that escaped at seeing his cousin so flustered. A few seconds passed where he tried and failed to contain a shit-eating grin. “I’m trying to help you out here. As your brother in all but name and blood, it’s my duty to see you get laid before we graduate, and if you’re legit crushing on the man—”

“ _For the last time, it’s not a crush!_ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There was supposed to be a bonus smutty scene at the end, but uh. I kind of lost the thread for it, so my virgin muse gets to keep his relative purity for another day, I guess.
> 
> Idea and format inspired by [wynnebat](http://archiveofourown.org/users/wynnebat/pseuds/wynnebat)'s [A White Dove](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4279614), if any of you read Teen Wolf fics and found this familiar.


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